This article summarizes the arguments and counterarguments in the framework of the scientific discussion on determining priority directions of developing banking systems, modern problems and prospects of introduction of financial innovations in the process of development of banking services. Its pace and current trends require a completely scientific basis. Accordingly, the purpose of the study is to determine the impact of modern information technology in the banking systems of the European Union countries and the future prospects for their development. For this purpose, the hypothesis was, first of all, proposed that the level of business activity of the banking activity is related to the level of development of the country's economy and it will determine in the future the development of the banking systems of these countries. An appropriate empirical study was conducted to confirm this hypothesis. The systematization of literary sources and approaches to the solution of this problem has shown that in scientific sources the analysis of the impact of financial innovations on the banking systems of individual European Union countries is mainly carried out. Taking into account the different levels of development of these countries, these studies do not allow us to make conclusions and suggestions as to the future of European banks. Electronic banking, the creation of a large number of fi tech companies, crypto volume, blockade – radically change the classical banking business. These changes are gaining momentum and the future of the banking system is now very ambiguous. Will classical banks be able to function effectively, or will new financial companies come to their place? What should I do to manage the bank to lay the groundwork for its successful operation, in the context of the rapid development of information technology? Who and how will regulate global financial markets? There are no clear answers to these questions. The methodical toolkit of the study was a clustering method, methods of systematization, grouping, comparison, expert evaluations. The study period covers 2015-2018, which shows the most rapid dynamics of changes in the processes of customer service of banks from the offline to the online sphere. In addition, this period of time is characterized by the rapid development of financial innovation, which radically changes the approaches to traditional banking activities. The article presents the results of cluster analysis, the results of which allowed to group the countries of the European Union at different levels of digitalization. As a result, it was found that the most advanced economies and the most developed countries have the highest level of deductibility of banking activity (related to clusters 2 and 1). As a higher level of economic development provides more opportunities for investment, Internet access and better education of the population. In addition, it can be argued that it is the countries from the first group in the near future will or will become leaders in the European market of banking services, and it is on them that they will need to be guided by the orientation of the development of the banking system. The results of empirical analysis, have shown that banking institutions understand the lack of prospects of activities without financial innovation. On the other hand, as the study showed, such activity is characterized by high-risk banks. The issue of safety of up-to-date financial transactions is extremely important for supervisors who can not at the moment agree on what measures to apply and implement in order to minimize the risks of financial transactions. The study empirically confirms and theoretically proves that it is important to understand and justify the basic principles of the future development of banks, to identify and develop measures to minimize the levels of financial risks associated with the implementation of financial innovations, as well as to simply understand and evaluate changes expected by users of banking services during the next 5 to 10 years. The results of the research can be useful for scientists, management of banking and other financial institutions, as well as for users of banking services.

The development of digital technologies is one of the factors influencing the cities’ readiness for the COVID-19 breakout. The purpose of this article is to assess cities’ resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic depending on the “smart” level criteria. The article uses the following research methods: (1) bibliometric analysis to identify the main directions of scientific research regarding “COVID-19” and “smart city” in Scopus publications for 2019–2022; (2) k-means clustering method to identify common patterns among smart cities regarding their readiness and responsiveness to COVID-19; (3) correlation analysis to identify the relationships between smart city performance indicators and COVID-19 severity in these cities. The Smart City Index 2021 was a key criterion for classifying a city as smart for this study. The correlation analysis included two stages: (1) correlation analysis of the Smart City Rank and indicators of COVID-19 readiness and responsiveness; (2) correlation analysis of the Smart City Rank and its health care components and COVID-19 severity indicators. According to the study results, smart cities demonstrated higher COVID-19 readiness and lower COVID-19 fatality rates. However, they lag behind in terms of resilience and sustainability of their health care systems.

The management of stable development of business entities requires the improvement of methodological approaches regarding their efficiency assessment. We think that the efficiency assessment should conduct a comparative analysis with other economic entities regarding the effectiveness of using existing amount of material, financial and labour resources. For a comparative assessment of the operational efficiency of Ukrainian enterprises the authors suggest the method of frontier stochastic analysis. The essence of this approach is to build a standard enterprise with the highest efficiency indicators and calculation of the efficiency coefficients. According to the results of statistical hypotheses testing it is determined that the translog function with the truncated distribution of a random component best describes the investigated functional dependences. According to the results of modelling the efficiency coefficients for every enterprise and period of investigation were received and on the basis of them the ranking of enterprises efficiency was made.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused the acceleration of digitization and the consideration of digital financial inclusion as a means to minimize negative economic consequences and increase the resilience of households and SMEs. The purpose of this article was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital financial inclusion by constructing and calculating an integral index of digital financial inclusion (DFI) based on Global Findex Database indicators. The approach to calculating the DFI index and two sub-indices that characterized passive participation in financial relations and active use of digital technologies was based on a linear mathematical model of the integrated indicator and on the use of the Fishburn formula to calculate the weight coefficients. The obtained results proved the acceleration of digital financial inclusion in 2021 and revealed significant differences in DFI between countries and groups of countries according to income level as well as problems of financial exclusion of the most vulnerable groups of population, especially in developing countries. The obtained results regarding the level of DFI are discussed from the point of view of COVID-19 impacts: both directly by influencing consumer behavior and decisions regarding digital financial services and from a broader perspective by influencing business entities, financial service providers, and regulation.

Constant innovations in finance and technology and different levels of their development worldwide necessitate investigating universal integrated indexes. It will enable a general assessment of the digitization of financial services and allow carrying out a comparative inter-nation analysis. The authors proposed to evaluate the level of digitalization of financial services (DFSI) based on three components: digital inclusion, financial inclusion, and digital financial services. The suggested approach includes several steps: 1) forming an array of input data by eight indicators; 2) establishing the priority of indicators and calculating their weights by using the Fishburne formula; 3) calculating the integral index of digitization of financial services by using the weighted sum method. According to the obtained DFSI values, the European countries were divided into four groups: with a high, medium, low, and critically low level of digitalization of financial services. Countries with a high level of DFSI are